San Francisco History

Every House Has A Story to Tell

Michael Helquist burrowed into a trove of tax records, real estate maps, water service accounts, and vo﻿ter registrations to reconstruct the history of houses and their occupants in San Francisco's North Panhandle neighborhood, an up-and-coming district featured in the New York Times. First published in the newsletter of the North of Panhandle Neighborhood Association more than ten years ago, a dozen house profiles will be presented here over the coming months.

The Victorian Alliance of San Francisco conducted its annual house tour in the North Panhandle neighborhood in 2012

Michael Helquist, “Historical Profile of the North of Panhandle Neighborhood,” NoPA House Tour, The Victorian Alliance of San Francisco, 2012To the west of the port city originally known as Yerba Buena, Mexican landowners had struggled to no avail to keep their unfenced properties free of squatters during the Gold Rush. These tracts, known as Pueblo Lands, were eventually placed in litigation before the United States government. On March 8, 1866 Congress decided against the property rights of the Mexicans, and the broad stretch of windswept sand hills stretching from Divisadero Street to the ocean was deeded to the city.

This new acquisition was first called the Outer Lands after its change in ownership; subsequently it was known as the Western Addition. Surveys and new maps of the renamed area were completed by 1868 with contractors determining a grid of rectangular blocks with the layout of the streets. By March 1870 the first land grants were awarded to settlers and developers.The area known today as North of the Panhandle, or NoPA, stretched five blocks from Divisadero Street as the eastern border to Masonic Avenue as the western limit. The north-south streets ran six blocks from Turk to Fell Streets. In a compact city, the neighborhood comprises thirty square blocks. The streets tout the names of popular political leaders of the day (Hayes, Broderick, Baker, and McAllister), prominent individuals (Fulton, Lyon, and Turk), and points of interest (Golden Gate and Grove).

Fell Street Victorians seen from Panhandle Park

In 1870 California Governor Henry H. Haight’s decision to develop Golden Gate Park under the guidance of the San Francisco Park Commission spurred investors, builders, and prospective homeowners to build along the blocks between Divisadero and Masonic. The original proposal for the park was to feature a broad green swath from City Hall and the Civic Center to the ocean. But land was precious in those early years of expansion. A compromise was forged allowing for three, instead of five, miles of parkland with a narrower, one-block-wide strip for three-quarters of a mile at the eastern end.The narrow strip was dubbed Panhandle Park and was used as entry to the wider, more expansive Golden Gate Park. The Panhandle was no ordinary grassy open space. It became an outdoor arboretum with living exhibits from more than a dozen countries of every continent, including bush cherries from Australia, ginkgoes from China, olive trees from Greece, cedars from Morocco, and hawthorns from England. Today the eucalyptus trees in the Panhandle, originally from Australia, are among the oldest trees in all of Golden Gate Park.

Cable Cars and VictoriansCable car lines were extended to allow downtown residents easy access to the farther reaches of the city following Hayes, McAllister, Haight, Oak, Ellis, and Geary streets. These tracts were located a respectable distance from downtown but were still accessible for professionals, tradesmen, and families. Property values usually tripled whenever cable car lines were installed. The first surveys of the outer Western Addition established that these properties would be developed mostly for middle-class homeowners.

Of three types of lots (corner, longer mid-block, and shorter mid-block key lots), the corner lots were the most expensive and the key lots the least costly. Properties along the east-west streets were usually more desirable than those situated on the north-south streets.In the new cable car-lined avenues of the Western Addition, families selected the building features and patterns seen on a grander scale on the more exclusive Nob Hill district. Although not so elaborate in scope and execution, many of the homes near the Panhandle proudly displayed extensive ornamentation. A few impressive mansions were built in the 1890s by the truly wealthy. The 2000 block of Golden Gate Avenue, between Lyon Street and Central Avenue, has several handsome Stick-style houses dating to the 1880s. Many of the homes on this block display the rich variations that defined San Francisco’s buildings with blended Italianate and Edwardian styles and angled bay windows, an element that became more popular in the next decade.

Most of the early construction also reveals the creativity and sometimes the frivolity of the Victorian builders, depending upon the amount of ornamentation added to the exteriors and facades. Whether these details seem integral to the style or simply excessive is often determined by the balance of features as well as by the exterior painting schemes that may highlight them.

Central Avenue Victorian between Fell and Hayes Streets

The residents of the 2000 block – as a typical example of the district’s denizens – were a mix of working and middle – class backgrounds. In 1911 San Francisco voters were required to list their occupations when they registered. Based on these records, the demographic makeup of a city block is evident. There were carpenters, plumbers, engineers, salesmen, and merchants, as well as a music teacher, a police officer, an attorney, and those involved in other trades such as bricklaying, general contracting, tile setting, and iron molding.

Demographic UpheavalSan Francisco saw an unprecedented surge in population during the World War II era, from 1941 to 1945. It was not uncommon in many of the city’s older neighborhood for the grand one-family homes to be bought and sold as boarding house investments, rather than used as singular residences. In later years such a house would provide additional units, often with the upper flat divided into two separate apartments consisting of three rooms each and a smaller street level apartment carved out of a former basement, scullery, or ballroom.With the massive migration to the city for war-related industrial jobs, many African-Americans settled in the greater Western Addition district, including the area around Fillmore Street that was left vacant by the forcible evaluation of Japanese-American residents to detention camps. A thriving African-American community also developed in the North Panhandle vicinity with many local churches and shops. Following the war, much of the Caucasian population deserted the Western Addition, seeking the newer “suburbs” in today’s Richmond and Sunset districts to the west, and also further south on the peninsula.The social turbulence of the late 1960s and early 1970s took its toll on the residents of the North of the Panhandle. Some fine homes were abandoned and others fell into disrepair. What had surely been a proud address fifty years earlier was dismissed pejoratively as “Western Addition” – then meaning an area regarded unsafe and undesirable. An undertone of racism in the designation was implicit for many.

The blocks closer to the park seemed to experience more of this social disruption. Those who remained in place, however, formed a tightknit community, one that recognized its problems but appreciated their urban neighborhood with its proximity to the park, schools, and churches.

Panhandle Freeway rendering, 1950s (not built)

Rail Yard and Freeway ThreatIt was a major event in the neighborhood when the San Francisco Municipal Railway yard and cable car barn situated on a full block along Masonic Avenue between McAllister and Fulton Streets was sold to make way for a supermarket. In 1955 the Plaza Foods Shopping Center owned by the Petrini family, and later by Falletti’s Fine Foods, was built. Opening day was celebrated with a circus in the parking lot, with amusement rides for neighborhood children. The site has since been redeveloped as a mixed-use condominium complex, above a Lucky supermarket and other businesses, with an underground parking garage.

In the mid-1960s a Panhandle Freeway was proposed to close the link between the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge to complete the Federal Interstate Highway System in the city. Among the options considered were a surface freeway and an underground tunnel beneath Panhandle Park starting at Baker Street and continuing the several blocks to Golden Gate Park. Public debate raged, with the daily newspapers stirring strong sentiments on both sides. Although houses on Fell Street would not have been sacrificed to a freeway expansion (as would those on the south side of Oak Street), botanists warned that century-old trees and verdant land would be irreparably damaged, both by a surface road and by any tunnel excavation. When the ultimate decision fell to the Board of Supervisors, just one swing vote blocked the plan. Nevertheless, the proposal was resurrected in 1966 with renewed hot debate, before it was again defeated.

Revitalized Divisadero Signals TransformationThe last years of the 20th century ushered in significant changes to the neighborhood. As real estate prices spiraled ever higher in much of the city, the North Panhandle offered more reasonable alternatives. Homebuyers unable to afford properties in the Noe Valley or Pacific Heights neighborhoods found in this previously ignored area a better value for their diminished real estate dollars.

With the charged economy of the late 1990s and of first years of the 21st century, a great number of buildings have been upgraded, painted, and generally improved – more than 200 have been re-painted during the past several years, according to neighborhood newsletters. In 2012 a streetscape beautification project was instituted along the Divisadero commercial corridor and transformed dull concrete slabs between the traffic lanes into more attractive, landscaped medians with accompanying street trees along the sidewalks.

Changes in the district have been widely recognized in the local press and on the internet. The community also benefits from the activities of the North of the Panhandle Neighborhood Association (NOPNA) originally founded in 1991 to address safety and crime concerns. The group has evolved to become a vibrant, active coalition of residents with a mission to provide a clean, safe, and enriching environment.

Easy access to Golden Gate Park’s open spaces and lush greenery, improved bicycle routes, and mixed-use paths through Panhandle Park make this area once considered “sketchy” an even more appealing nexus for an ever-changing population of young professionals, students, families, and longtime residents. In more recent years, a noticeably rapid evolution has occurred with new services and restaurants along Divisadero. A Sunday Farmer’s Market, regular art walk events, parents’ groups, block parties, and curbside parklets encourage pedestrian and social activity and contribute to and enhance the neighborhood’s liveliness and livability.

Based on an historical profile prepared by Michael Helquist, 2001. Abridged by Kathy H. Carroll, 2012. Edited, with updates and additional writing by Tamara Hill, 2012. Reprinted with permission, The Victorian Alliance of San Francisco. Visit the website for this year's house tour.

Author’s postscript, March 2015: During San Francisco’s technology boom in 2007-2008 and, again, more recently, many neighborhood residents and other city dwellers questioned and objected to the upgrades and improvements as gentrification of the North Panhandle. The spikes in rents and real estate prices and high-priced restaurants and shops have made the neighborhood less affordable to many who call the North Panhandle their home.